uneven tire wear and front end noise, coincidence?

Time for a wheel alignment on the front!!! Hal

 

Did the alignment folks mention anything about week struts [shocks] or anything else? Worn out road suffuses can cause allot road noise.I notice it especially on the truck side of the road! It does sound like your Prius has excessive noise though. I normally drop the tire pressure to about 34 lbs. on rough road surfaces! You could try that and see if there is a noticeable difference. Hal

 

have you rotated your tires every 5000 miles?

 

no, they would charge extra. 50K is pretty good with no rotation and you will never get even wear without it. cars are not perfect, even when aligned properly. and things change as you have different amounts of people/cargo on board. i think you're fine. put on a new set of tires, rotate them every 5000, and i hope you get 50K out of the next set!

 

All bets are off till you replace the Integrities as they are hands down one of the most god awful piece of junk tires ever made. Its astounding to me you have 50,000 miles on these tires. Mine were unbarable in road noise alone at 29,000.

Crappy tires will beat the sh*t out of the suspension.

Don't spend another dime on anything till you get those tires off the car. You won't believe how bad they are till you get a new set of.......anything.

 

I'd sure be interested in knowing if struts fixed the problem. Local dealership so far is saying it's the engine mount, and it's about $400 cheaper to just ignore it. I'm not convinced, though -- too much hard-knock feel in the steering wheel for me to believe it's struts.

 

Which shop is this? Seems like people in LA are always asking for "a good hybrid shop." Maybe they don't specialize in hybrids but a dedicated Toyota shop would be the next best thing. At least it would be a place for folks to try out.

 

First fix the suspension problem, then worry about the tires. (Not fixing the suspension will just chew up the replacement tire. Rotating the tires without fixing the suspension would have chewed up *all* of the tires.) If you've only ever taken the car to that one shop for service, take it to a Toyota dealer for another diagnosis, because it sounds like these guys are not seeing something important.

And By The Way, 50K on the OEM Integrities is excellent. 25K is not uncommon.

 

Personnally I found the Integrities so loud it would be hard to diagnose anything from the cabin. New tires are the way to go glad your getting them Monday. That will probably fix about 75% of your front end issues. Then get a front end alignment. During alignment they will be able to see if anything's bent or loose. A clunk could be alot of things like something loose.
Our cars have a very simple front end suspension and you don't have a lot of miles on the car so it shouldn't be anything bad.

In the future watch the tires closely for uneven wear.

 

Oh boy you had to ask!!!

There's so many available. I went with Kumho Solara's @195 also. Really nice tire but not a LRR tire so I took a 3 mpg hit. But they were really cheap. Night and day ride difference and quiet too.

The Michelin's are excellent and there's a few posters that have those Yoko's too. Lots of Goodyears Triple Treads...

Please be aware if your local tire store can't get a brand Tirerack.com will drop ship your tires right to them if they are on there preferred dealer list. I got mine at Tirerack and they were dropped for me.

Lots of posters used Costco too with coupons. So shop around a little. All depends on what you can afford. You may have to drop some money in the front end soon.